A new financial quarter starts, full-scale data appraisals are once again at the forefront for every business’ sales agenda. Luckily, Elasticsearch’s open source tool Kibana 5.0 is the talk of the town – and for good reason.

Improvements since version 4.0 are unequivocally noticeable. Its new and far more sleek user interface display not only wows in terms of visuals (note the subsidiary menu that minimizes when not in use), but demonstrates impressive UI capabilities that allows you to reach data far more effectively. The new CSV upload, for example, has the potential to catch a much wider data spread, transforming it to index mapping that’s effortlessly navigable. Its new management tab allows you to view the history of the files with associated data, as well as Elasticsearch indexes where you actively send log files.

This version’s huge boost in code architecture grants the potential for more augmentations than ever, especially with split code self-contained plugins with open-end code tweaking, resulting in several lucrative alpha and beta versions. And it’s essentially allowed us the privilege to now ask: what kind of data insight does my company really need, and which app is best to harness it?

1. Logz.io

Logz.io has fundamentally enriched Kibana with two major touches: increased data security, and more serviceable enterprise sequences as a result. Take their access user tokens, for example, which enable share visualizations and dashboard with those who aren’t necessarily Logz.io users, rather than the URL share function. You can pretty much be as selective with your data as you so please; specific and cross-referenced filter searches are an added function to the tokens. This makes it easy to attach pre-saved filters when back in Kibana.

2. Skedler

Skedler has specifically focused developed reporting capabilities with actionables to perform on data, effectively meaning you can do more with it all in a proactive way. Scheduling is an integral part of this program’s faculty, as it works with your existing database searches and dashboards; allowing you to organize dispatches daily, weekly, monthly and so on. Again, you’re able to action specific filters as and when you’re scheduling, making your reports as customized as needed when sending for peer review.

3. Predix

Predix has established itself as a strong contender for effective data trend sweeps, such as HTTP responses, latencies and visitors – and you’re able to debug apps at the sam e time. Combining this with Kibana’s exhaustive data visualizations and pragmatic dashboard, controlling and managing your log data not only highly secure, but it allows you to become more prognostic when forecasting future data.